Don’t be scared, it’s just esports! Ok, no, wait, there is quite a lot of it, maybe you should be mildly concerned. This Halloween weekend is stuffed fuller than a trick or treater’s cheap plastic candy basket with professional gaming action. Unlike a Jack O’ Lantern full of off-brand Mars bars, this week’s matches are guaranteed to get you hyped without the associated sugar crash afterwards. It is unknown which of these two options is better for your teeth, though. It’s the season finale of League of Legends’ and Counter-Strike’s yearly dramas, as well as some prep work for Blizzard’s festival of electronic sport next week. There is literally something for everyone, so get a pail of candied corn in and celebrate death (or whatever Halloween is about) with some fine esportsmanship.
League of Legends Worlds 2015 Finals
Worlds comes to a creepy close this All Hallows’ Eve, as finalists SK Telecom T1 take on their surprise contenders KOO Tigers in Berlin. Though not the all-Europe final many were hoping for after the elimination of both Fnatic and Origen in last week’s semifinal bouts, this still promises to be a thrilling conclusion to the LoL year. KOO, the “Korean rejects”, will be looking to prove their fellow countrymen wrong to pass over them when putting together this year’s rosters. SKT, however, fill the role of the infallible professionals with Faker the final raid boss before KOO can lift the Summoner’s Cup. It all ends Saturday at 04:00 PDT / 11:00 GMT and you can catch it on the official Riot Games Twitch or Azubu.
Counter-Strike: DreamHack Cluj-Napoca
Throughout this weekend, the world’s best CS:GO teams will be fighting their way through the final Major of the year, and the last chance to bag glory in 2015. Things are already looking a bit shaken up for this one as Luminosity Gaming have gotten out of their group and into the playoffs ahead of the year’s reigning champs, Fnatic. The ESL Cologne winners now have one more match on Friday 02:00 PDT/09:00 GMT against the massively improved US Cloud9 side to determine if they continue on with a chance to defend their title. After that, the quarters play out on Saturday, starting 02:00 PDT/09:00 GMT and the last at 11:00 PDT/18:00 GMT. Then Sunday concludes with the semis from 02:00 PST/10:00 GMT and the final at 09:00 PST/17:00 GMT, all streamed via DreamHack’s Twitch channel.
Dota 2: Nanyang Championship 2015
The conclusion of this month’s Nanyang Championship plays out over Friday and Sunday this weekend, with Team Secret already overcoming a shaky start to the new season and finding themselves in the final. Friday’s losers bracket playoffs will decide who faces them in that final (Sunday 01:00 PST/09:00 GMT—watch that daylight savings change, America) and Vici Gaming, Team Liquid and EHOME are all still in the running to do so. You can catch all of those on the BTS twitch.
Hearthstone World Championships group stages
BlizzCon proper isn’t until next weekend, but there are quite a few matches to get out of the way before those grand finals. For Hearthstone, the groups have already begun and will continue until Saturday as players bid to secure their spot on stage for the quarterfinals on November 6. Some standout matches include ThijsNL vs Kno (Friday 09:00 PDT/16:00 GMT), the Japanese contender who finds himself second in Group A after edging out JAB 3-2 in his first match. The top two battles continue with Kranich vs Zoro at 10:00 PDT/17:00GMT and Ostkaka and Hotform face off just after at 11:00 PDT/18:00 GMT. Chinese and Taiwanese competitors Zihao and Pinpingho round out the battle for the top of their groups at 12:00 PDT/19:00 GMT. You can catch all matches on Friday and Saturday on Blizzard’s official stream.
StarCraft: WCS Global Finals 2015
Also on the BlizzCon prep list is the StarCraft Round of 16. These start on Sunday, with the top-vs-bottom matchup of herO vs FanTaSy (10:00 PST/18:00 GMT) and continue down the WCS rankings, pitting the top players against their inverse rank qualifiers every 90 minutes or so. This leaves Europe’s wonderchild, and the last remaining non-Korean competitor in the competition, Lilbow playing against last year’s champion Life at 14:30 PST/22:30 GMT. Tune in then to lend him your energy by pasting those same four BibleThump emoticons over and over in Twitch chat on the official stream.
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